


In Darkness

by towards



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Abuse, Gen, Medical Experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 22:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3464687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towards/pseuds/towards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Nero and Weiss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Darkness

His cries have only ever been soothed by sedatives. Nero knows that he is a killer before he understands what it means to kill. They teach him through SND and train him from afar, drug him so that they can test him and then throw him away in a chamber meant for isolation. He knows only that people vanish around him, that he robs the world of something good merely by being in it. He does not know what a mother is, only that he had killed her, and that it was a great loss to them all. 

And that they are unsure if he is a blessing or a curse.

Nero is four and has never known a touch softer than fingers probing for a vein. A needle is as close to a gentle kiss as he’s ever received. The scientists hold him at arms length, guide him from place to place with a leash and keep him numb and senseless when they handle him, and to him this is normal.

It is painful, but this must be how it is.

He can count his fingers and toes but he cannot tell what the color of the sky is, nor can he articulate what it means to feel something beyond fear and apprehension. He does not know - cannot articulate - what it means to be hopeless because at four, that is all he’s ever known. He knows that the boy watching him through the glass of the examination room is his brother, and he has heard that family means a bond and warmth and affection, but all the times he reaches out are met with a cold stare.

For he is a killer.

There is a commotion that day as he discovers the ability to teleport. Nero slips away from the guards on a whim, unsure of where he’s going only that he wants to go somewhere and that is enough to send all of DeepGround into a panic. They find him on the surface, in the office of President ShinRa. The President is furious and he is unsure of what he did, but as he leaves the scientist and President exchange words.

"I want more like that," he says. "More like that and this bloody war with those backwards traditionalists would be over,”

Nero sleeps in a big too big for him in clothes far too small - restricting his movement, allowing them to keep an eye on him even when there are none to spare. He cannot walk without someone unbinding his feet, and he cannot crawl as his fingers are bound to the point that they are broken. He lays there when he is not needed, and, at four, he suspects that perhaps if this is what it means to be alive then he should not be.

The door opens and he sits up in reflex.

The first touch he receives that is not a clinical examination is that of his brother. An open palmed slap across the face. He’s startled, afraid, Oblivion screams but cannot do anything against the binds. Time stops as both of his brother’s hands come up to cup his face and those blue-gold eyes bore into his. His brother is nine and he is four and to a four year old, nine may as well be an adult. He cowers.

"You really can’t do anything at all, can you?" In a voice not unkind. A tone he doesn’t understand, they’re words he’s heard before but said in such a way that it sounds like another language. "It’s okay. I’m not mad anymore."

Weiss hugs him and Nero does not know what to do. Something warm bursts in his chest and before he knows it, he’s pressed close and begging for affection and love with every fibre of his being.

He is of DeepGround and they are all killers, and from that moment on nothing in life matters more than the tenuous bond between them.

o o o

They call him Weiss’ shadow. It is as close to affectionate as the doctors get, chuckling behind clipboards as they watch him trip over feet he’s unused to in a struggle to keep pace with his older brother. Nero clings to his pantleg as they traverse the halls of the compound, weaving through constructions sites to head the the simulated skies. 

"The real world is bigger," Weiss says, more to himself than anyone else. Nero doesn’t care about the skies. He is six and he barely understands that there is a world above their heads, the sky is the sky and the handful of books they’re permitted to read tell him that there is only space above it. "Someday, I’ll see the real thing again."

And then, as an afterthought, “and you’ll see it too.”

The simulated sky fades to dusk and Nero wants nothing more than to give him the stars. 

o o o

They do not send Weiss on surface missions because at seventeen, he’s tried to escape far too many times. Nero is easier, Nero knows no better, and so long as Weiss remains in DeepGround he will always return without a fuss.

.He becomes too old for hugs somewhere between twelve and thirteen. Nero serves missions above-ground every now and again, bound so tight he ends up with nerve damage to his hands. The Restrictors thump him harder when he complains so he learns to mind his tongue, nursing injuries of varying degrees and phobias of varying severity as he makes the treacherous walk into adolescence. They say that they cannot keep binding his fingers and hands specifically and search for another means, while he traces the line of his brother’s nose with a fingerpad that feels nothing and tries to kiss him like the people on the surface do.

Weiss pushes him off, but doesn’t shove him away or object as he rests at his feet and stares up. And that is enough. Nero settles against his brother’s legs and breathes a contented sigh, for he is home, and home is easier to understand than the world above.

o o o

Project G defects and things change. Nero is fifteen and suddenly he is banned from traversing the compound unwatched. He tries to leave his room without permission and ends up with a broken jaw and a shattered hip. The Restrictors say nothing, but he knows.

Their fear is growing.

His surface missions end as the war does. Instead he is drugged and goes under the knife for the thousandth time in his young life, waking up with half of his head shaved and new instructions about what he is and is not allowed to do. They tell him that they’re controlled now - really controlled. His visits are numbered, and more importantly, monitored. Weiss and Nero are banned from private conversations. Weiss sees the damage to him and angrily rises from his throne, only to sit back down as the Restrictor commands it.

He sits on his brother’s lap and Weiss does not shove him off and away, just pets his hair soothingly and in that action is a promise that he will be avenged.

It never occurs to him that perhaps it was an act of possession, rather than an act of compassion.

o o o

The two of them are sent up to retrieve the escaped experiments themselves a few weeks after his nineteenth year of his life. DeepGround wants Project G, and some have a vested interest in the two from Nibelhiem. Their orders specifically pertain to Genesis - they are told that he will be their brother and that he will make them stronger, and while Weiss seems to delight at this idea - Nero shrinks from it. 

SOLDIERs are Restrictors.

Genesis could easily join the ranks of their oppressors. He is already “perfection” in the eyes of DeepGround, an even greater asset than Sephiroth thanks to his adaptive mutagenic genes - there is no reason for them to put him through the torment that the Tsviets face.

Then what? Then another, even more powerful foe that they cannot hope to match. Nero hopes that his regenerative cells kill him before they reach him. He does not share the hope that his brother does - nor does he share this desire for freedom. He has become apathetic to his own suffering, choosing to feel nothing as they slice him open and pour poison into his body, but if it would make Weiss happy, he would do anything.

They find him alive, to his displeasure. They are unguarded and unchecked. They do not spy the other convicts, and chose to accept this as a victory.

Genesis refuses them and slips away, burying himself in the caverns beneath Midgar where DeepGround cannot reach.

Yet not before he gives them one final brotherly gift. Gift of the Goddess passes from his bloodstream into theirs.

Oblivion goes out of control and decimates the Northern Wing. Nero cannot, does not, calm down for several days.

They say he is not the same after that. His hands are bound, his legs are bound, his face is bound - but it’s too much. Oblivion has grown too strong and their fear shifts from a well placed caution to a life or death trial. He is years worth of expensive research, he is worth much more alive than dead.

Nero spends the next three years of his life wishing they had picked the other choice in his lonely prison.

He wishes that he had never felt at all.

o o o

Weiss cuts him down from the pillar himself, his booming voice declaring that they have won.

Nero is out of it, starved and weary and wanting for little more than death. What sanity he has left has rotted and withered along with the rest of his body, but as soon as those strong arms wrap around him he knows he is home again. He buries his face in his brother’s shoulder and weeps until he runs out of tears.

They do not have time for rest.

Their freedom has a price he could never imagine. Weiss has three days, and those three days are not enough time. Nero would love nothing more than to sit at his side and console him as his body begins to shut down, but he cannot. He refuses. He refuses to lose him to this.

When he finds the answer he sets to work immediately. There is no hesitation, no question. Nero rests their foreheads together and strokes his brother’s wild mane of hair, murmurs that he loves him, that this is temporary, that he will fix this. 

Because he loves him.

And Weiss would do the same for him.

o o o

He does not sleep until the job is done.

He does not sleep until OMEGA’s ascension is nigh, and when he manges to drift off for even a few moments he is informed that there are intruders and Valentine now poses a threat. Rosso and Azul are dead.

Nero does not consider their similarities worth noting. He simply grabs his weapons and goes to stop this game from progressing any further.

o o o

He stumbles into Weiss’ arms, bleeding out and all too aware of the damage done to him. It will be fine, he has survived worse. He tells himself this as he reaches for his brother, the way he had so many times before in their youth.

"Dear… Weiss…"

The smile upon Weiss’ face is something he had never seen before. At first, he thinks euphoria. They are reunited, they are finally free.

He does not register the pain of being impaled until the burn of OMEGA’s purity cuts through him. Nero reaches, his hands gently touching the side’s of his brother’s face. There is a plea upon his unseen lips that goes unheard, a question that he struggles to ask.

"You actually thought I cared about you?"

He does not comprehend.

Weiss throws him aside like trash. His body shatters on impact, shards of metal flying every which way. Nero takes a rattling breath and knows only one thing.

That cannot be his brother.


End file.
